


Murphy's Law

by rlwrites (braverybros)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Also I’m not a medical professional in any way, Broken Bones, Doctor Niall, F/M, Meet ugly but in a cute way, author is despicably inept at tagging system, or forgiveness, several other injuries, so any errors in that field call for suspension of belief
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:47:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23589388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braverybros/pseuds/rlwrites
Summary: Sienna Grace Murphy is despicably ironic.  Despite the virtue her mother hoped to instill when she chose her only daughter’s middle name, Sienna Grace Murphy is far from graceful.  Twenty-three of the two hundred and six bones in her body have fracture remodeling.  Actually, make that twenty-four.“Oh bugger.  Not again.”A story about a broken wrist, a ridiculous plaster cast, and the strangest blind date known to man.
Relationships: Niall Horan/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost of an old story. Any errors are all my own. Will update tags as I go.

Sigs is despicably ironic. Despite the virtue her mother hoped to instill when she chose her only daughter’s middle name, Sienna Grace Murphy is far from graceful. Twenty-three of the two hundred and six bones in her body have fracture remodeling. Actually, make that _twenty-four_.

“Oh bugger. Not again.”

Sigs knows before the pain sets in that her wrist is broken. It isn’t the sickening crack that notifies her either. She knows she’s going to break something before she even hits the ground. Because that is _just her luck_. As soon as the tip of her boot catches on the uneven pavement, as soon as her mobile flies through the air in a last-ditch effort to catch herself, Sienna Grace Murphy knows.

Sigs has developed a high pain tolerance (mostly out of necessity). She still feels the throbbing pain in her wrist as she clutches her arm to her chest and tears are still leaking out of her eyes and her breath is deep and jagged, but she doesn’t feel the panic of trauma any longer. She’s far too used to what needs to happen next. So used to it, in fact, that she’s got the receptionists at the three closest A&E’s on speed dial. So when she strolls into the A&E of Royal London Hospital, Allison at the front desk is expecting her.

“Oh honey, what is it this time?”

“Wrist most likely. The carpals, maybe even,“ she grunts, "the ulna.” Sigs winces and inhales deeply as a careless step jostles her arm.

“Again? This will be the third time!” Allison slides a clipboard onto the counter and clucks her tongue. “I’ve already filled out most of your information. Just need to fill out the information on what’s the matter and sign the waiver.”

“You’re an angel, Allison. Thanks.”

Sigs takes the clipboard with her good hand and shuffles towards the chair she usually haunts when she waits to be treated. Unfortunately, her favorite seat is taken by a woman and a toddler complaining about the craft bead that’s stuck up her nose, so she’s forced to settle for the chair two seats down that creaks every time she shifts.

After filling out the all-too-familiar form clipped to the clipboard, Sigs pulls out her cell, which also suffered from her unfortunate tumble. A spiderweb of cracks has spread across the screen and Sigs sighs deeply for the casualty. This will be the second time this month she’ll have to get her screen replaced. She slides the thumb of her good hand across the screen and rings her flatmate.

“Hello there love! Hey…shouldn’t you be on a blind date at the mo’? Didn’t go well, eh?”

“Yeah, Hallie, I…should be…but I’m at…the hospital instead.”

Sigs can hear the noise in the background of her flatmate’s call cease and assumes that Hallie has paused the video game she’s undoubtedly playing.

“You’re kidding me, Sigs. Again?”

“I know, trust me.” She squeezes her eyes closed and sucks in a few shallow breaths. “I know. Like I said…I’ll explain later. But I need…need something first.”

“Yeah, ‘course. What’s it?”

“The number for that guy you…set me up with.” More deep breathing. “Need to ring him…and let him know I’m not gonna make it.”

“Yeah sure thing, babe. Simon has it lying ‘round here somewhere.” Sigs can hear Hallie rustling through their messy flat and takes the time to inspect her wrist. Just as she’s expecting, there is a violent burst of purple and black and yellow around the region where her carpal bones lie. She hopes that she hasn’t broken the bone in her forearm. That will take longer to heal.

“Ah,” comes Hallie’s voice, and Sigs writes down the number that Hallie reads out in the margins of her medical information form.

“Poor bloke,” Hallie says before they hang up, “From what Simon said, he was perfect for you.”

Sigs ends the call with as much of a chuckle as she can manage with a broken wrist and sucks in some more shaky breaths as she dials the man that was supposed to be her blind date.

“Hello?”

“Hi. I was supposed to meet you…for our date. ‘Fraid I can’t make it, I’m actually in”—she breathes deeply—”A&E right now.”

“Christ. You okay?” His voice carries a tinge of alarm (which is unsurprising), but is also colored by a low, soothing brogue that makes it easier for her to inhale (which is _surprising_ ).

“Uh,” she draws out, letting her eyes rove around the waiting room. “Relatively? Broke my wrist…I think.”

“Which one?”

Sigs stares at the little girl with the bead in her nose as if she held the answer. All she does is stare back. “The right?”

“I meant which A&E are you at?” She can hear the scrape of a chair through her phone and she pulls it away to stare at it with confusion as if that will also give her an answer. Naturally, she is still perplexed when she brings it back to her ear.

“Uh…Royal London?”

“Okay. I’ll meet you there.” His tone is final and leaves her even more bewildered.

“Wait…you want to come…here?”

“Yeah.” Sigs waits for him to explain further but is only treated to the sound of him apparently leaving the bar they were supposed to meet at.

“Oh…okay…I mean, sure, I guess you can come down here. But—”

“Great. Be there in ten.” He hangs up before she can finish her protest and after she fumbles to lock her phone, Sigs slumps back into her seat in a daze. Her arm jerks and a bolt of white-hot pain shoots through her wrist. And as a fresh batch of tears threatens to slip down her cheeks, Sigs muses on the fact that her first date with a man named Niall Horan is about to be in a hospital.


	2. Chapter 2

Sigs sits in the waiting room of Royal London Hospital A&E and prepares herself for several things.

First, she steels herself for the wait. This is—Sigs has learned—the worst part of getting hurt. Or one of them at least. Because A&Es are always busy and the wait always seems longer when she is sitting by herself trying to breathe through the pain.

She starts out jiggling her knee (an annoying habit she relapses into whenever she is impatient), but that jerks her arm and sends her head spinning from the pain. So, instead, she tries to prepare herself for everything else she has to face in light of her newest injury.

Because the next thing she needs to prepare herself is how she’s going to tell her mother. Sigs gnaws on her lip and imagines the frown that is undoubtedly going to etch itself into Elisabeth Murphy’s regal face. She will _tut_ and pull her in for a hug, but Sigs knows that her mother’s sigh will be laced with disappointment. And Sigs hates that most of all.

Even with as much experience as she’s had, Sits still had not perfected the right way to break the news. Sigs looks to the little girl with the bead, but she appears to be just as miserable as ever and clearly the third time is _not_ the charm.

Sigs sighs and let’s her head drop back against the wall and contemplates how her life turned out so messy.

“Sienna?”

Sigs’ head snaps up and her breath catches in her throat. Because the third thing she needed to prepare herself for is hovering only a few feet from her face and if she is anything, it is _far_ from prepared.

Before Sigs left for her blind date and before she took her fateful tumble onto the pavement, Hallie told her enough about Niall Horan for her to be able to find him when she got to the bar. So hours later, as she sits in the creaky seat in the back corner of Royal London Hospital A&E and clutches her swollen and purpling arm to her chest, Sigs knows that the man in front of her must be him and that Hallie has grossly underplayed his striking looks.

“Tousled brown hair with a great smile and incredibly blue eyes,” Sigs recalls Hallie saying. If she wasn’t in such close proximity to the subject in question, Sigs would snort.

Because Niall Horan is far more than a white smile and some blue eyes.

Niall stands over her. Or hunches, rather, as he’s leaning over with his hands on his thighs. He’s slightly out of breath which makes the white dress shirt he’s got buttoned all the way up to his neck strain in the _most_ pleasant way every time he inhales. This reminds Sigs that she needs air as well, and she sucks in a deep breath through her teeth.

Niall’s hair is, in fact, tousled and brown but to leave it at that would be an injustice. It’s so thick and artfully wind-tossed that Sigs thinks that she will never find a head of hair she likes as much. Right away she realizes what an absurd thought this is, but she’s caught sight of his eyes and also realizes that she doesn’t quite care if she’s being absurd as long as she can stare at his face.

His eyes are blue, but Sigs feels that such a description seems horribly inadequate. In fact, there’s hardly any ‘pure’ blue in them. Instead, there is navy and cerulean and even hints of periwinkle and yellow and somehow they all work together in a way that is both soft and strong. Because while his eyes hold softness and concern, the set of his jaw has the strength and calm of someone who is often in control of hard situations. It’s an interesting thought she files away for later.

Regardless, Sigs has never been one to dabble in poetry but she thinks she could get into it just to find a way to adequately describe how lovely his eyes are.

“You’re Sienna, right?” His breath fans across her face and breaks through her daze.

“Sienna. Me. I mean, yes! That’s me.”

Niall’s shoulders relax as he squats down in front of her chair and reaches for her arm. “Brilliant. Let’s have a look then, yeah?”

Sigs recoils instinctively but she doesn’t anticipate the shock of pain that zips through her arm when it slams against her chest. She sucks in more air and tries to focus but the room is spinning and her chest feels tight.

“Jesus, you okay?” Niall leans forward onto his knees to try to catch the expression she's attempting to hide behind her hair. When she doesn’t respond he puts a hand on her knee, which would have made her blush if she hadn’t been so focused on not vomiting from the pain.

“Are you in shock?” he asks and she manages to shake her head. Immediately after she has to squeeze her eyes closed.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much is the pain?”

A few more shaky inhales and she’s choking out an, “Eight.”

“Okay, okay. Good.” Niall’s voice is calm and gentle and it makes Sigs shiver. The only people that talk to her like that are nurses and, usually, it grates her nerves. Oddly enough, when Niall does it his tone settles over her like a Ann’s blanket and helps her relax. Just a little.

Just like with his hand on her knee, she doesn’t notice him pull her arm away from her chest and delicately bring it closer. And because her eyes are screwed shut, she can’t see him studying her swollen, bruised wrist.

But when she does open her eyes again she’s just as surprised to find that he’s possibly the most gorgeous man she’s seen in her life. 

(this is a weird thought to have during this point in the day’s timeline. She knows it’s probably the worst time to be having a crisis over how beautiful someone is, especially since it appears as if he’s focused solely on her injury. But at this point she can only conclude that the pain is significantly muddling her linear thought processes and so she just decides to go with it.) 

Niall is about to prod her very broken wrist again so she pulls it back with a lurch, _again_ , and it slams back into her chest. Again! That white-hot luck of pain multiplies two-fold and Sigs’ eyes roll back as she almost faints.

“ _Christ_. Okay,” he says looking deep into her eyes. “We need to get that x-rayed and reset soon. Don’t want you _actually_ going into shock.“ Niall rises and looks around the waiting room. "Right. Come with me.”

He tries to pull her to her feet but Sigs is shaking her head and trying her hardest not to wheeze as she says, “I don’t…the nurse said…the wait was…at least another hour.”

Niall finally succeeds in pulling her up onto her feet and treats her to a peculiar little half-smirk. Sigs isn’t one hundred percent certain whether the room is spinning because of her broken wrist or because of that smile.

“Oh, I’ll get you in,” he says, “Trust me, I’m a do—”

And that’s all that Sigs catches before the room spins so fast that it fades to black.


	3. Chapter 3

When Sigs comes back into consciousness the first thing she thinks of is the color blue. The second thing she thinks of is that she is three seconds from emptying her stomach contents everywhere.

Unfortunately for her, her thought becomes a reality when she spews sick over the side of the bed and onto some poor, unsuspecting chap’s shoes. When her stomach is done purging its contents onto the floor, Sigs slowly rolls up, wipes her mouth with the back of her good hand, and groans. It is _not_ her day at all.

And when she looks to The Poor Chap to apologize for ruining his very nice-looking chelsea boots, her day goes from bad to worse because The Poor Chap is Niall Horan. The hot, Irish Niall Horan that was supposed to be her date but came to the A&E like a chivalrous white knight to save the day. He’s doing a pretty good job of not looking disgusted at what she’s just done to him (and his expensive shoes) and now Sigs is even more embarrassed.

“Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry. I’m totally ruining your evening. I can’t believe you’re still here. Why are you still he—”

Sigs words cut off and her eyes blow wide when Niall suddenly presses his palm to her mouth. And really, it’s her mouth and her nose and half of the rest of her face because his hand is just huge. Fucking massive. That thought alone scatters her thoughts.

“You talk a lot.”

His words are blunt but there is something about the soft lilt of his voice and the tiny smirk on his face that makes Sigs think that he didn’t say it in complaint. His hand slips away and, unconsciously, she traps her bottom lip between her teeth as if she can keep the feeling of some part of him on some part of her as long as she can. Sigs isn’t really sure but she thinks she feels his gaze slip down to follow her action. 

The thought brings a violent blush to her cheeks. The ruddy, splotchy kind of blush that has been a Murphy family heirloom forever. She blushes deeper and finds herself wishing for the delicate, cosmetic-looking blush that Hallie gets whenever she’s embarrassed or drinking.

“Yeah, uh. I get that way. Mouth gets away from me. Mile a minute. Bad habit. Happens when I get…uh, flustered.”

Her blush intensifies, as if that were even possible, and Sigs wants to smash her face into a wall because she basically just admitted to Niall that he makes her flustered. She hopes that he will assume that it’s the pain making her loopy, but the laughter in his eyes make her think otherwise. His mouth quirks and Sigs wishes a gaping hole would open up in the ground and swallow her whole.

“How are you feeling?” Niall asks, making her frown. Now that she thinks about it, she feels funny. She feels jiggly, like a plate of jello being put on a table. Her brain is doing weird things, like trying to relate ‘how she feels’ to jello on a plate.

“I must be going mad.” It just slips out of her mouth, loud enough for him to hear, and she’s confident that Niall must agree with her. “Sorry, it’s just that when you asked how I’m feeling, the first thing that I thought of was jello. That’s a bit odd isn’t it? I’m not normally this odd, I swear.”

Sigs expects a look of befuddlement or alarm or maybe even disgust. But Niall surprises her with a proper smile so big and bright that a tiny little dimple dents its way into his cheek.

“It’s okay, odd is cute on you,” he says and then he winks. Delicious Irish White Knight Niall Horan bloody winks at her and Sigs knows for sure that she’s truly gone mad and that she must be hallucinating. Because with _her_ luck, there is no way that someone as hot as the man in front of her would show signs of interest.

But…then he does the thing.

That thing that would happen in movies or in books that would make Sigs roll her eyes because it would never, ever happen to her and it would never, _ever_ make her swoon.

(Or so she thought.)

Because when Niall lifts his hand and tucks a bit of her wayward hair behind her ear, letting his hand stall near her cheek, she feels light-headed. And she has a strange urge to giggle. And, actually, she does. She really giggles. The kind of giggle that doesn’t stop, the kind that grows and gets bigger, like a snowball rolling down a hill. If that were a thing that actually happened, that is. Damn it all, she’s fucking lost it.

Niall smiles again, clearly amused by her giggle fit, and looks down to write something on some papers attached to a clipboard.

“The jello feeling could be the pain medication I gave you while you were passed out. How is your wrist feeling?”

The reminder makes Sigs aware of the ache in her arm and for the first time she registers that although it still hurts, the pain is not nearly as intense.

“Feels fuzzy.”

Niall’s brow furrows for a second before his face relaxes into a smile.

“More morphine brain, I’m guessing.”

Sigs nods. She’d meant to tell him that that the pain is fuzzy, going in and out, ebbing and swelling depending on if she tries to move it, like a padded sort of pain, softer than it was before. She knows she’s not making any sense, but her tongue starts to feel heavy and if she tried to explain she would probably only say more ridiculous things and she desperately wants to stop embarrassing herself in front of him.

“Dr. Horan, we’ve got x-ray room two ready for Miss Murphy.”

“Thanks, Emily. We’ll be right there.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sigs is stuck. She is caught, unable to stop her eyes from darting between Niall and Emily, who is the exhausted-looking physician who is currently studying her x-rays. But what Sigs is mostly stuck on is the phrase _Doctor Horan_.

Sigs is probably in shock. From her fall, from the pain medication, from Emily’s announcement that she has a distal radius fracture, from the fact that Niall is not only just a really hot, surprisingly considerate blind date from Ireland, but also a bloody _doctor_.

Sigs runs over the previous hour in her mind. Whilst in X-ray Room Two, Sigs learned that Niall is the Chief of Cardiology at Royal London Hospital, which is spookily coincidental and also incredibly convenient. And when Sigs thinks about it, it’s pretty cute that Niall fixes hearts for a living. Although, because of the pain medication coursing through her body, Sigs is starting to think a lot of things are cute. Like the hospital gown she’s wearing or the little emoji sticker on her nurse's nametag or the man they passed in the hall with boils all over his face. Again, Sigs is on a _lot_ of pain medication and it's making her do weird things.

Like staring. Niall is probably getting creeped out by her hyperfocused staring but he has the good grace to not show it. He’s studying her chart, his hip leaned against the arm rail of the hospital bed she’s currently perched on.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Niall glances up from her charts and his eyebrow crooks up. Emily gives Niall a sideways glance as she checks the IV that they inserted into her arm after she passed out.

“I mean,” she tries to clarify, “there’s gotta be something wrong with you. You’re hot”—Niall immediately blushes, although Sigs is too distracted and too doped up to notice—"You’re nice, you’re a _heart doctor_ , for Christ’s sake. You’re my mother’s _dream_. So why are you going out on blind dates? It just doesn't make sense, yeah? There’s gotta be a catch.” She narrows her eyes at him, trying to suss him out.

“Are you one of those creepy blokes who’s into My Little Pony or somethin’? Into a little devil worship or summat?”-her eyes blow wide-“Are you one of those doctors who save people by day but secretly go on serial killing sprees at night?”

Niall breathes out a soft laugh and Sigs finds that it makes her feel even funnier. "No, of course not,” he says gently.

Sigs is unconvinced and purses her lips but ultimately decides to drop it. For now, anyway. She wiggles further back into the mattress to get more comfortable and sneaks another look at the illuminated x-ray hanging up on the wall.

“Well anyway, what’s the damage then, doc?”

Niall’s mouth pulls into a tight, grim line as he takes another look down at her charts.

“Luckily, the bone didn’t puncture through the skin, but the impact was great enough that it caused a fairly severe shatter of the bone.” This comes from Emily as she points to the x-ray where, sure enough, there is a pretty nasty break in the bones of her wrist.

“At this point, I recommend surgery where we’d insert metal pins inside the wrist to set the bones.” As she gestures to the various sites where a pin would go, Sigs feels the blood drain from her face and the saliva in her mouth grow thick. The idea of surgery that extensive makes her feel queasy and she looks to Niall, her eyes blown wide with panic.

“I-I can’t. Holy fuck. Pins? I-” Her breaths become heavier as she sits up and makes a move to jump off the bed and run far away from the whole mess. Her mind is whirring, visions of metal instruments and machines beeping and waking up with an arm like The Winter Soldier.

Niall surges forward and urges her back against the bed. “Nuh-uh, I don’t think so. Where the hell d’you think you’re goin’ like that? You can’t just rip an IV out, are you crazy? It ain’t like in movies!” She ignores him (and the tingle she gets where his hand is pressed against her sternum) and tries to push back against him. But he’s too strong for her and she slumps back against the bed with a growl. “Woah there, firecracker, take it easy.”

Sigs pouts. Mostly because she hates being told what to do, but there is also a (very tiny) part of her that knows that Niall is right and that she’ can’t go anywhere with her wrist in the state it’s in.

“Emily,” Niall says, moving his hand to Sigs’ shoulder so that he can still grab her if she tries to make another break for it. Sigs grumbles and tries to cross her arms in further protestation, but the throbbing in her wrist kicks up again and she’s reminded how screwed she really is. She gingerly rests her bum wrist in her lap. “Is surgery the only option?”

Emily's eyes volley between Sigs and Niall a few times before letting out a hesitant sigh. “There could technically be a two-week window for surgery. We could just set you up with a heavy-duty splint, but I really would advise against—”

“That!” Sigs practically shouts, “I want that!”

“Sienna, are you sure?” Niall asks. He looks worried and Sigs probably should take that as a sign, but she’s so relieved by the fact that she doesn’t have to have surgery. She should also probably be a little more curious about _why_ Niall is so worried about her, about how he’s squeezing her shoulder and how his brow is creased. But, again, her relief is overpowering.

“Yes, I’m positive. Gimme that so I can get outta here.”

Niall gives her a resigned nod and then another to Emily, who rolls her eyes and walks out of the room.

Niall doesn’t leave her side as Emily comes back and splints her wrist. He lets her crush his hand in her good one as her wrist bound, he hugs an arm around her shoulders when her tears start to fall and she’s cursing him because it was _his_ dumb blind date that is the reason she’s in this mess. He wipes her tears, he makes sure she gets a prescription for painkillers, and he makes her promise that she’ll check in with him in a few days so he can make sure she’s healing properly.

She doesn’t tell him that she really actually does appreciate him being there, or that as his arm squeezed around her back that she felt safer, or that when he wiped her tears her heart fluttered in that cheesy rom-com way that she thought never actually happened in real life. She doesn’t tell him that she probably won’t call him, just like she probably won’t call her mother, because she hates making a fuss and that, really, it’s not all that bad anyway.

She also doesn’t know that she’s lying to herself or, rather, hasn’t admitted to herself that she’s lying about not calling him. And she also doesn’t know that Niall texts Hallie that night to ask her to tell him if it looks like Sigs’ wrist isn’t getting better.


	5. Chapter 5

Niall isn’t usually a worrier. He doesn’t have that luxury in his profession. He sees scores of patients each week and if he lets himself worry, if he gets attached, he wouldn’t be able to do his job. He isn’t heartless, not by any stretch. But he doesn’t worry.

That’s why it’s so weird that he finds himself obsessively checking his phone for a text or call from Sienna. He knows that her break was bad. He knows that the splint isn’t going to be enough to help her heal properly. But in that room, when she got so panicked and was ready to hightail it out of A&E with the IV still attached to her arm, he knew that he couldn’t push her into surgery. So he held her hand as it was splinted and hoped that she didn’t go through too much pain before she came to her senses and called him.

But as each day ticks by and her call still doesn’t come through, Niall grows antsy. And worried. Which _also_ worries him. And now Niall is stuck in some awful tailspin of worry and nerves. And all he wants is to never hear the word worry again but mostly to know if Sienna is okay.

So he caves and texts Hallie. He asks her if Sienna’s arm is getting any better or if she looks like she’s still in pain and the response he gets back makes everything worse.

_Well, when she’s taken her pain meds she gets really funny and knocks the fuck out, but otherwise, I can tell it’s probably worse. Especially when she’s got to go to work and can’t be doped up on meds._

So he does something he never thought he would ever do. He asks for the name of the place where Sienna work and the second Hallie’s answer comes through he grabs his keys and walks through the door. He regrets this for many, many reasons but mainly the fact that he is now stuck walking through the London drizzle in naught but a plaid button-up.

Niall glances down at his phone, at the tiny pulsing dot on the navigation app that tells him he’s almost arrived at the address Hallie gave him, and he hopes that there has been a mistake. Because when Hallie tells Niall that Sienna works at a place called _Linda’s_ , he expects a little bakery or maybe a tiny boutique or something. What he doesn’t expect is the seedy-looking bar-slash-restaurant that he’s just stopped in front of. But when he checks his phone—one last time—to see that the address is right, he starts to wonder what other surprises this girl has in store for him. He pushes through the door with a heavy sigh.

The inside of _Linda’s_ is exactly how he imagined it would be based on the outside. It’s a shithole. The floors are sticky, there are bodies littered throughout, an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song is playing through the portion of the room that is dominated by the bar, and everything is dark and moody.

It looks like a breeding ground for disease and infection. Niall isn’t all that opposed to a few pints in dodgy pubs, but he worries about Sienna working here. After a quick glance around, Niall is relieved to not see her behind the bar. But his relief is short-lived because he can’t see her anywhere else. It’s an odd sort of place. It’s got dart boards and billiard tables and cushy booths and a hostess. Hanging from the walls are hundreds of polaroid pictures. Niall can see a photo of a woman chugging directly from a pitcher of beer, another of an awkward close-up of a man’s beard and giant smile, a hen do, a group of men standing atop the bar with no shirts on, and even a picture of three nuns proudly holding up plates of fish and chips. It’s like _Linda’s_ couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a pub, a restaurant, a punchline in a joke, or a fever dream.

Niall rolls his shoulders and approaches the hostess with violently red hair.

“Is Sienna working today?”

She looks up from her stand with a look of annoyance, like Niall just interrupted something very important. But he can see in the reflection of her glasses that it’s just a game of solitaire on her iPad, so he doesn’t feel too bad.

“Eh?”

Niall inhales slowly and asks again. “Is Sienna working today?”

“Who?”

“Sienna…er, Sigs?”

Recognition flashes across the woman’s face.

“Oh, yeah. Forget her real name sometimes. Anyway, yeah, she’s workin’ today…unfortunately.”

Niall raises his brow but doesn’t ask. He just figures that the hostess isn’t a very friendly person. He clears his throat into his fist and says, “Great. Can I get a table for one in her section?”

Now it’s her turn to raise her eyebrows (which are interestingly painted on in a ghastly blue hue). “Are you sure? There’s plenty of room in another section…or even the bar?”

“I’d like to sit in hers, please.”

Just then a crash echoes through the restaurant and Niall whips his head around to find Sienna on her knees, picking up the shattered remains of someone’s lunch, all the while spewing apologies to the older man and woman in the booth. The man is frowning down at her and wiping what appears to be barbecue sauce off of his sweater vest.

Behind Niall's shoulder, his hostess laughs. “Like I said, sir, are you sure?”

Niall’s stomach twists and he clenches his teeth to stop himself from saying or doing anything rash. He wants to run over and help Sienna. He wants to pull her out of this dump and take her straight to the hospital to take proper care of her wrist. He wants to tell the hostess off and dramatically get her fired. But none of that is distinguished behavior and Niall is a self-professed gentleman. So instead he settles with, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

The hostess rolls her eyes and grabs a menu. "Right this way.“

She leads him to a table in the back, one with a dodgy leg that makes the whole thing wobble. The chair he plops down into is dubiously creaky. Despite the fair amount of empty tables scattered around the rest of the place, this table is suspiciously close to the toilets. Niall is certain the hostess hates him, although he’s sure he didn’t do anything to merit it.

Sienna is busy cleaning up the mess by the couple in the booth so Niall takes a look at the menu. It is ridiculously large in the most literal sense. When he lifts it up it stands roughly forty centimeters tall and covers him up. He isn’t going to order anything—he rarely eats something he doesn’t make himself—but he’s curious. The menu has an eclectic assortment of represented cultures varying from traditional English to Thai to American Barbecue to Indian to French. Niall cannot help but shake his head at how all-over-the-place _Linda’s_ seems to be.

“Hey there, honey! Welcome to _Linda’s_! What can I get you to drink?” Sienna’s voice is sickly sweet and sounds completely different from the last time he heard it. When he drops the menu to the table, his expression is amused and quizzical.

"Honey?” His developing grin is devilish. “We’re on to pet names already, eh?”

The customer service smile Sienna wears slides right off her face and is quickly replaced with a slack-jawed gawk. “You! What are you doing here?” Sienna casts a look around as if she’s waiting for someone else to jump out and surprise her.

Niall snorts. “Well, certainly not the warmest welcome I’ve ever gotten. But at least it’s better than the one your friend over there gave me.” He nods his head over to where the hostess is and grimaces when he notices that she is glaring directly at him.

“Samantha? She’s harmless. She just looks grumpy.”

Niall’s laugh is hearty as he takes Sienna in. She’s in a pair of black skinnies and a black shirt with _Linda’s_ logo printed on the back, a plain black apron tied around her waist. On anyone else, it might look mundane and unordinary but Niall thinks that she looks beautiful. Her hair is off of her face in a ponytail that makes him realize that there is a delicate spattering of freckles along her cheeks and nose. She looks a little sweaty, the bits of her hair that aren’t contained by her hairband stand on end, and there’s a suspicious-looking stain on her t-shirt, but he likes her like this. She’s natural, uncontained, imperfect. And that’s exactly why he can’t stop staring.

Niall realizes that nothing has been said for at least twenty seconds and Sienna is shifting from foot to foot awkwardly. She pulls a notepad from her apron and a pen from behind her ear. Niall catches the way she winces when she flips open the notepad.

“Uh…anyway, what can I get you?”

“You shouldn’t be using that arm.”

“Huh?”

“Your wrist,” he says, nodding at the splint that has been improperly reapplied. “You shouldn’t be using it.”

Sienna rolls her eyes and sinks into one hip. He would probably find it cute If he wasn’t getting increasingly frustrated and worried about her refusal to take care of herself.

“I’ve still got to work.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

It’s Niall’s turn to roll his eyes. “As much as I admire your perseverance…and probably your pain tolerance, it’s only going to get worse if you don’t properly take care of it.”

She rolls her eyes like a pre-teen. “Yes, _mum_.”

Niall’s jaw clenches. “You can start by at _least_ making sure the splint is done up right. May I?” He reaches out for her wrist and is met with her sigh.

“Oh, I suppose.”

Niall grasps her by the elbow and pulls her close. Sienna makes a sound of surprise when their knees crash into each other but Niall is concerned with her wrist.

He pulls away the bindings and inspects her arm. The swelling hasn’t gone down much and the bruising only looks more violent. A crease forms between his brows when he moves her hand and she hisses.

His face turns up to her and concern colors his expression.

“It’s not getting better, is it?”

Sienna gnaws on her bottom lip, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Is it?” he prompts again, a little more forcefully. Still refusing to meet his gaze, she shakes her head. Niall lets out a slow sigh and curls his finger under her chin, urging her to finally look at him.

His voice is soft and his eyes are pleading as he looks up to her. “Sienna, you need surgery. It’s not going to heal properly otherwise. _Please_.”

He's close enough that he can hear Sienna suck in a soft breath. And while she couldn’t bear to look at him earlier, the way her eyes are locked with his makes it seem like she can’t possibly tear herself away now. Her resolve is crumbling, Niall can see it. But he still holds his breath until she all but whispers.

“ _Okay_.”


	6. Chapter 6

Niall should be focused on his paperwork. He has a stack on his desk that’s thick enough to make a rather impressive door-stopper and he needs to get it done by lunchtime but all he can manage to do is eye it with disdain. Niall straightens from the hunch he's sunk into, delighting in the series of satisfying cracks, and scrubs a hand up and down the back of his head. He needs to quit messing about and get it done and dusted, no distractions.

It absolutely _has_ to get done now because after lunch Niall has a consultation and his rounds around the cardiology floor. He wants to check up on Mrs. Niedermayer in 4D and Mr. Brown in 12A. If he doesn’t get through the stack, he’ll have to work on it after that, and that means he’ll have to skip checking in on Sienna right when she gets out of her procedure.

Which. It’s not. Like...it’s not something that he _has_ to do. It’s just…well, he needs to make sure she doesn’t try to do anything stupid again like try to bolt with an IV still stuck in her arm. That’s all. And…he worries. Just a little. And actually, it’s mostly that he just needs more time to figure her out. Yeah, that’s it.

Niall prides himself on his intelligence. He’s doesn't brag about his genius-level IQ or the fact that he’s the youngest Chief of Cardiology that Royal London has ever had (by almost two decades). He isn’t a dick about his successes like some of the neurosurgeons on the 7th floor. He’s humble and still gets embarrassed and shy when his achievements are publicly acknowledged. He’s good with his patients, he’s observant. He likes to think he does a pretty good job of _reading_ people. Which is why Sienna is becoming such a frustration.

The part of his job that usually sticks with him is his patients' eyes. There’s nothing worse than a patient looking up at you with terror and panic welling up with their tears. They follow him home, make themselves comfortable on his couch, staring back at him from the bathroom mirror while he’s brushing his teeth, tuck him in and whisper into his ear as he settles into his sheets to sleep.

Niall hasn’t been able to get Sienna’s big, kaleidoscope eyes out of his head since that first day. Since she heard the word ‘surgery’ and the blue-green-teal eyes that were so calm before blew wide and desperate, like a rabbit cornered by a hungry wolf. The prettiest eyes in the world will always haunt you if they have enough fear in them.

Sienna’s eyes are definitely among the worst.

It surprises Niall, at first. He’s seen her chart, mostly. He knows she’s no stranger to breaks and sprains. Even though her charts show that she hasn’t had any major operations, Niall thought that would have at least dulled her sensitivity to the prospect of surgery. But she still tried to run, tried to escape. Niall’s sure that if he hadn’t gotten that text from Hallie, if he hadn’t gone to find her at _Linda’s_ , Sienna would still be avoiding the operation.

It was _that_ Sienna that Niall expected when he showed up that morning. He wanted to make sure that she had a familiar face in the room, wanted to be there to calm any fears and explain what was happening. But Niall has to admit that most of his reasoning is selfish. He wants to make her more comfortable so that he'd see her eyes calm. Regain their warmth. He needs to replace the image of Sienna’s darting, terrified, cold eyes with something else, something less chilling and less likely to haunt him at night.

It is something that Niall knows he can do. He can help, he can make her feel more comfortable, he can fix her. Even if it’s not actually him in the O.R. putting Sienna’s wrist back together, he pulls the strings and makes the calls in order to make sure that the doctors who are working on her wrist are the best in their field. So he makes sure that he's there when she goes in for surgery and he’s going to make sure that he’s there when she gets out. He’ll do everything he needs to drain the fear out of her Caribbean-ocean irises.

Niall sits back in his chair and sighs out a long breath. His brow wrinkles when he thinks about what he expected to see that morning and what he actually saw.

Sienna had a mid-morning surgery so she had to get to Royal London early for prep. His buddy in orthopedics owed him a favor so he made sure that she had the best personnel in her OR. He was prepared to use his best Soothing Voice, to offer his hand and tell her she could squeeze as hard as she needed, and to keep her from having a panic attack or running away…again. Niall hasn’t had to be that guy in a long time, not since he was still a med student, but he had no doubt that it was a role that he could slip back into. As easy as a square knot suture.

He walked in with his face controlled and soft, ready to hand her the pastel yellow hospital gown, help start her IV, reinforce her surgery information, and make sure she understood all the consent forms. He expected that she wouldn’t be ready for all of that since she hadn’t had many major surgeries.

What he found when he walked in was the complete opposite. When Sienna got there, she went through the process like she knew exactly what was happening. She didn’t even flinch when the inserted the IV, didn’t even scrunch her brow as she read through all the paperwork. In fact, she waved him off when he asked if she had any questions about the forms or the procedure. Her eyes were still a little wild, but her actions were so natural that they almost seemed practiced. As Sienna was wheeled out of the room and off to the OR, Niall was the one who was left reeling.

Niall glances at his watch to calculate how much time he has until he should be able to go check on Sienna. The procedure is relatively simple, an open reduction with internal fixation. A few pins, screws, or plates to get her bones back together and stable so they can heal. A procedure that ortho has done numerous times. Niall has to repeat that last thought more times than he likes to dwell on. He doesn’t want to, is the thing. He’s just…worried, is the thing. He also really, really hates the thing, whatever it is.

With one last scrub to his face, Niall hunches back over his desk and gets to work, pushing his silly thoughts and a pair of distracting ocean-colored eyes to the back of his mind.

Ultimately, Niall isn’t able to make it to see Sienna in the Postanaesthesia Care Unit. His consultation gets bumped up, he has to attend a last-minute meeting with some of the hospital administration, and Mrs. Niedermayer gets quite chatty. Normally, he'd be thrilled to hear another story about her three cockatoos and why she named them Moe, Curly, and Larry. And normally he wouldn't cut her off mid-story with a flimsy excuse. It's just that he's...worried. By the time he gets back to his office to start the last bit of leftover paperwork, Sienna is probably already safely transferred from PACU to an individual room. He had gotten a text from her attending a few hours earlier that her surgery went off without a hitch. Although it makes him a little more relieved, he still cannot help the annoying thoughts that nip at the edge of his concentration.

He doesn’t normally worry and he _hates_ it. It’s throwing off his equilibrium and makes him feel like he’s got an itch between his shoulder blades that he just can't reach.

He really hates that he isn’t able to make it to PACU. He promised that he would be there, and he hates breaking promises. He tries to reassure himself that it would have been pointless to show up right after she got out anyway. Sienna was most likely still loopy from the anesthesia or heavily nonsensical from the Toradol that they gave her for inflammation and pain. She’ll be on heavy medication for a while longer and based on the reaction she had to the pain meds she had the first time, most of what she sees or says for the next day or so will be fragmented and confusing.

It still does not stop him from heading straight for her room the second he finishes the last page of paperwork.


	7. Chapter 7

Sigs lays in the grass and stares at the sky. The clouds above are fat and fluffy, like the candy floss her mum always forbade her from having. She screws her eyes closed and imagines laying down on one of those fat, fluffy, candy floss clouds. They’re so soft she rolls her head from side to side and nuzzles her cheeks into the cottony pillow beneath her head. Her eyes flutter open and suddenly she’s not looking up at the sky anymore, she’s looking down at the ground below. Down at her own body, lying in the grass, her hair shining and golden against the vivid green of the grass. 

Turning her head (the one in the clouds, not in the grass) to the side, Sigs discovers that she’s actually nestled in that fat, fluffy, candy floss cloud. Her face breaks out into a dazzling smile, one as bright as the sun that glints off of her hair. It’s such a lovely thought, to be able to imagine and wish for something so much that it actually happens. Like these candy floss clouds. They’re softer than she ever imagined and it makes her insides feel as light as her outsides and it makes her outsides feel as light as the clouds that hold her up. 

Curiosity has her sticking her tongue out, desperate to know if the clouds taste as good as they look. And she’s surprised to find that they taste like mint. Even better than they look. She’s also surprised to find that it starts to dissolve just like candy floss, and her tiny atmospheric oasis begins to disappear from around her. She doesn’t worry. It only makes sense, after all. They’re probably made out of proper candy floss. Wouldn’t that be something? 

Her limbs start to tingle, like they’re dissolving too. This beautiful, heavenly cloud is dissolving and pulling her body along with it. Sigs' smile dims. What happens when the cloud is gone? What will keep holding her up?

Sigs wants to clap her hands to her ears, to drown out the ringing that’s suddenly started, slowly getting louder louder louder. It’s deafening, overwhelming, and she wants to make it stop. She tries, but she can’t because her extremities have filtered away. Her fingers and palms and wrists have all completely vanished. She starts to panic, waving her arms around in the hopes that it will somehow stop the disintegration of her body, but it only speeds the process up.

The ringing begins to pulse and Sigs feels her panic pulse with it, _this is the end, this is how it ends, this is it this is it this is it_ , until the cloud is gone, she is gone, she is nothing but a thought that somehow feels like it’s falling falling falling towards the ground.

——-

Jello. All she can remember is red jello. Red jello in the little cups. The strange sound that plastic spoons make as they rattle around in plastic. Someone urging her to take a bite. She doesn’t know if she opens her mouth or not, but suddenly her whole world is cherry flavored so she thinks she must have. She smiles, she thinks, at the thought of a cherry-flavored world. How sweet. Cherry-colored skies and cherry-scented hair and cherry-flavored skin. Yes, how very sweet.

She likes cherry, she decides right then and there that it’s her new favorite flavor. It reminds her of hot summers learning to tie cherry stems with her tongue. Or that one night she and Hallie snuck into a club and asked for five cherries in every single drink. She loves pub cherries that are so awful they’re good. Or of lips. Bright red ones that whisper her name when they think no one is listening. _Sienna, Sienna, Sienna_.

Cherry is good, very good. Cherry jello is better.

——

It’s darker now when she feels her way through the mist. But she isn’t scared, for some reason she feels safe. She can’t explain it. Maybe it’s the fact that the mist feels warm, that it’s a glowy kind of fog, a bright one. Not the scary dark kind that only shows up in eerie forests or in horror films. 

Or, maybe it’s the hand that’s running through her hair, combing it away from her face and lulling her further back into the haze. So far back that it’s becoming thicker, becoming harder to see. Until everything just fades to obscurity and she can’t even see her hand in front of her face anymore.

——-

Sigs wakes up and feels funny, with the taste of cherries on her tongue and a familiar pulsing ring in her ear. Only now that her head is clearer, she realizes it’s not a ring. Not a ring at all. It’s more a beep. A pulsing beep.

Her head still feels heavy as she rolls it to the side to discover the source of the beeping. A machine she now recognizes as the one monitoring her heartbeat blips and blips and blips. It’s weird, she thinks, to hear something so perfectly in tune with the beating of her heart. She knows that the machine is obviously controlled by the thumping in her chest, but it still feels strange, like everything around her, everything in the room seems to be pulsing along with it, with her. 

The door opens then and the noise—the squeaking handle, the heavy door pushing open, the ambient noise from the hallway—breaks through the percussive beat of the machine. Sigs probably would have felt unsettled by it if it wasn’t for the face that popped in from behind the door. 

“Niall,” Sigs says, “Y’look like shit.” It just slips from her mouth and she should probably feel embarrassed or apologetic, but she’s just too tired. Thankfully, his wrinkled brow smooths, the uneasiness that clouded his eyes melts away, and he spreads into a beautifully easy smile.

“Hello, Sienna.” He steps all the way into the room and makes his way to the foot of her bed. His hands twitch, like they don’t know what to do, which is a far cry from his usual composure and grace. He doesn’t look drastically different—surely not like shit, despite her blurted observation—but there are hints of his appearance that are wilder than usual. His hair is a wreck, like he’s dragged his hands through the top and maybe fiddled with the sides. His five o’clock shadow has grown in and the set of his shoulders is heavier it normally is. Sigs finds that she likes it, seeing him when he’s not as put together, when he’s a little unsure of himself. She probably shouldn’t but she does. 

He grabs her charts and speaks, but his eyes never leave Sigs’. “I can’t say the same for you.”

There is something there. His gaze bores into hers and the air feels heavier, but her head is still too heavy to figure out what his statement actually means. Instead, she latches on the first thing she can think of. 

“D’you have jello?”

Niall breathes out a laugh and shakes his head. He finally looks down at her charts, sifting through the papers as he walks around to the side of her bed. “I’m afraid you’ve practically depleted the hospital's jello supply as it is.”

“Huh? How would’ya—”

“Oh…uh, your nurse said…before I came in. I was just passing by and…well, I saw something strange with your charts a few days ago, so I figured I’d drop in and make sure your treatment is being recorded properly.” 

He laughs again, but it’s not as airy as before. It feels more forced. As Sigs stares at him through narrowed eyes, she tries to figure out what is off, why he is refusing to meet her eyes again, why he seems so shifty about her charts and of all the things in the world, jello. She’s still out of sorts so she can’t pinpoint it exactly. Like she’s reaching and stretching to grasp it and her fingertips keep brushing whatever it is, but they can’t hold on, can’t pull it back. Sigs starts to think that maybe she’s getting closer, but then Niall turns to check one of the machines at her bedside and something else catches her attention.

Sigs groans and flings her good hand towards his arm. “Scrubs are s’posed to look ter-uh…uh, terrible. How the fuck d’you look like that? Had enough. Take ‘em off.”

“What?”

“Y’heard me, get ya kit off.”

This time Niall’s laugh is hearty and full-bodied. It echoes through his chest and around the room and sends Sigs’ head into a tailspin. Sigs is almost positive it’s the nicest sound she’s ever heard. The drugs are making her head candy-floss cloudy again so Sienna isn’t sure whether or not she says her thought out loud, but the smile Niall sends her way right after leads her to believe that she did. It’s amused, a little confused, and maybe a little worried. 

Sigs wants to ask him, to find out for sure if she said it out loud. If her confession is the reason for the worry in his face, but she’s so tired so suddenly. Her head feels heavy again, her eyelids even more so. The last thing she thinks about before she goes under again is how weird it is that a heart doctor would just be passing through the orthopedic floor.


	8. Chapter 8

_From: Hallie Baker_

_hows my fave physician 2day??_

**To: Hallie Baker**

**Good. Having a cuppa. Enjoying my day off…and you?**

_From: Hallie Baker_

_funny u should ask bc i’m stuck in class alllll day and can’t take sigs home from hospital ;)_

Niall gnaws on his lip and scratches the stubble that’s cropped up under his jaw. He sits on his couch in nothing but a pair of athletic shorts and wild case of bed head as he sips leisurely from his cup of Irish Breakfast. At least, he _was_ until Hallie texts.

He knows what Hallie is asking him to do and he really shouldn’t do it. He really, _really_ shouldn’t. Ever since he left Sienna’s hospital room, ever since she admitted under the influence of Toradol that his laugh was the nicest sound she’d ever heard, Niall has been telling himself that he needs to distance himself.

He already knows he’s too invested in her, way more invested than he should be considering the fact that they barely know each other. He’s normally very good at doing exactly what he should be to make sure his goals come to fruition. When he was still in school he passed on parties, late nights at the pub with mates, one night stands with randoms. He stayed up late to study and got up early to study some more. He saved his money, bought a nice car and a nice flat and a nice telly to put in that flat. His life is exactly where it should be, where he planned. Consequentially, Niall learned how to avoid things that might interfere with those plans. He stayed away from too many women, he cut out friends that didn’t understand that his education and his career came first. So he knows the rules, he _knows_. Only this time, he’s gone and forgotten them all. For some reason, he keeps doing exactly what he shouldn’t, keeps drawing closer and closer to someone who makes his head less clear and blurs the defined path he’s created for himself. Niall knows that he’s definitely doomed. Knows it the second Sienna wakes up and asked for jello.

Ultimately, that’s not what worries him, although it should. That’s not why he needs to step back. It’s the softness in her voice that felt like one of the brand new cashmere jumpers his mam liked to gift him at Christmas. The way she looked at him when she talked about his laugh, like he hung the moon in the sky and hand-painted every star around it…that’s what worries him more than anything else. What tells him that Sienna is drawn to him too.

When he thinks about it, the knowledge that he’s having as much of an effect on her as she is on him, it heats his skin. It turns his cheeks the ruddy crimson they get only when he’s been jogging outside in the dead of December and makes the cotton of his t-shirt stick to his back with sweat. It makes him jittery with nerves, like he used to get in primary school when girls would pass him notes in class. It’s a thrilling feeling. He imagines it’s what adrenaline junkies feel when they jump out of airplanes. He’s finally starting to understand why so many of his schoolmates invested so much of their time in chatting up women. But it also makes him sad because as much as he likes feeling this way—a way he hasn’t felt in so long, maybe ever—he can’t give into it. He can’t be the man she would need, the man he _wants_ to be for her.

Sienna makes him want to be able to sleep in late and wear pajamas all day and make out on the floor and spend hours discovering each other and take impromptu trips to the Irish countryside—Niall sits up with a start, unsure where that last thought came from. He’s _never_ thought of taking someone home before. He’s rattled and shocked and doesn’t know what to do. He wants to do all of these things, but there’s no way he would be able to do them and stick to his plan, to keep moving forward.

**To: Hallie Baker**

**…I probably shouldn’t…**

_From: Hallie Baker_

_pls pretty pls can you help me get sigs home???? i’ll owe you 4evr!!! i don’t trust her to be able to get home on the tube alone!!!_

Niall groans and flings his mobile across the couch, dropping his head back against the cushions. Hallie knows _exactly_ how to get him to cave and he’ll be damned if it isn’t working. He glares at his mobile. He can already feel the pull towards it, the ingrained need to help, to tell Hallie that he’ll be there and that she doesn’t need to worry about it.

His head is arguing with him once more. He was supposed to take today to catch up on some medical journals that he’d put aside, maybe do a bit of work in the garden, get in a good workout. He was supposed to be keeping his professional life out of his private life. Everything was supposed to be neat, uncomplicated, manageable. Just like he liked it, just like he planned.

Too bad Sienna Grace Murphy is far from what he had prepared for. Niall pushes forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and scrubs the back of his head with two hands. Sienna is the biggest red flag of them all, one that has the potential to mess with all of his carefully laid plans. Naturally, his head is telling—no, screaming at him—to get as far away as possible.

Too bad the rest of him isn’t listening. For the first time in what feels like forever Niall ignores what his brain is telling him; he makes room in his plan for a girl with an affinity for accidental bodily harm.

“Just this once,” he lies to himself. Niall picks up his mobile and, after typing a quick message, heads into his room to grab a clean shirt and his trainers.

**To: Hallie Baker**

**Yeah, I don’t trust her either. Haha. I got her, don’t worry.**

—-

Niall pushes Sienna’s wheelchair through the automatic doors of Royal London Hospital and tries to will away the blush on his neck. It’s been persistently burning his skin since he accidentally caught a glimpse of Sienna in her bra. He had just returned from the pharmacy with Sienna’s prescription when he walked straight into Sienna’s room while the nurse was helping Sienna get her top untangled from around her head. He’d clapped a hand over his eyes almost instantly, turned around, and babbled out several incoherent apologies. The nurse, a lovely woman Niall knew was called Rosa and had a sister she liked to complain about, just clucked her tongue until he blindly fumbled for the door and rushed back out.

It all happened in under a minute, but it still wasn’t fast enough for the image of soft skin and lavender lace to sear into his brain. Niall paces along the tiles that are just outside the door of her room and waits. Three tiles, turn. Six tiles, turn. Four tiles, turn. Three tiles, turn. Two tiles, turn. Repeat.

By the time Rosa pushes Sienna out of the room in the wheelchair that all patients leave the hospital in, Niall has worked himself into a near panic. He is poised for an explanation, but the way that Sienna’s head is tipped forward with her hair obscuring her face, it’s clear that she’s already dozing again.

Niall learns from Sienna’s nurse that she isn’t handling the pain well so it’s understandable that she’d be a little drowsy with pain medication. Niall takes over for Rosa, pushing the wheelchair and a floppy Sienna through the front entrance, the paper bag (with her prescription of Co-Dydramol inside) trapped between his teeth.

As they near his Range Rover (shiny, clean, neat, like he likes), Sienna’s head rolls back. Her hair slips back off of her face and cascades over his arms and Niall is overcome with the strongest urge to shiver. He doesn’t, of course, because he has better self-control than that, but the urge is so strong that his head is sent spinning with worry. He tips his face down to hers and instantly regrets it. Her eyes, albeit a little unfocused and dreamy from the medication coursing through her veins, lock on his. One of the first things Niall ever noticed about Sigs was her eyes (he hates the fact that he is a giant walking cliché… _how unoriginal_ ), but he’s never seen them so up close until now. He can see flecks of gold and yellow smeared amongst the Deep Marine Blue and Pantone 318. He's overcome with the desire to find out exactly what hue they are and paint it over everything—the walls of his office, the walls of his flat, the walls of his organs…everything. He knows, he _knows_ it’s absurd losing his breath over a set of irises. He's got eyes too...almost every human body has them! So!

Really, she’s not _that_ special.

Only he can’t figure out exactly what shade they are. This dilemma isn’t new. It’s been plaguing him since that first day in the waiting room. What should he call them? Are they blue? Are they green? Are they grey? It’s infuriating. He thinks he might growl out of frustration but then she’s smiling up at him and his troubled thoughts dance away. A tiny, closed-lipped smile that’s barely even a twitch of her lips, but it leaves him warm and tingly like slipping into a hot tub that’s maybe just a tidge too hot.

“Scrubs,” she whispers, although Niall doesn’t completely catch it.

“Sorry?” Niall leans forward to lower his ear closer. Sigs relaxes so that her head is fully resting on his right forearm. She brings the back of her hand to rub against Niall’s chest. He almost wrenches the wheelchair.

“No more scrubs. Like this more.” Her hand raises and her fingertips ghost over his jaw. Niall wants to nuzzle into her palm like his nan’s cat always did, only they’ve finally made it to his car so he laughs nervously and fishes in his pockets for his keys. He also does a bit of preemptive jogger adjustment…just in case.

“Right, well,” he says as he gently helps her to her feet. She sways and screws her eyes shut as she gets her bearings. “All right? Good.” Niall helps her up into the car, carefully minding her healing arm.

“Like I was saying. I’m not on call today and was gonna be at home all day. Didn’t have enough time to change into real clothes before I came here.”

Niall buckles her in, tamps down the flutters that rise up in his belly when Sienna pats his cheek and then rubs his scruff, and scampers around to the driver’s side. He takes three seconds to take a deep breath before he climbs in and starts the car. Niall knows he’s going to need it to get through the car ride without making a fool of himself.

“Mmm.”

Niall steals a glance as he pulls out of the car park to try to see what has Sienna humming, only her eyes, those sea glass, kaleidoscope eyes, are right on him.

“What?”

Sienna slips into a lazy half-smile. There’s more awareness in her eyes, Niall thinks, which is good…and could also be very bad. Sienna reaches over to pinch the sleeve of his t-shirt. Niall revels in the cotton sliding against his skin, knowing that she’s the cause of it. Niall also hates the fact that he’s being so ridiculous.

“You look like a Sunday nap.”

Niall chokes on a laugh and has to squeeze the steering wheel so that he doesn’t send his car (and them along with it) careening into oncoming traffic. He doesn’t know how to respond (in any coherent way that would leave him with his dignity intact, anyway) so instead, he opts for a goofy smile and scratches the crown of his head.

“Oh,” Sienna coos, “Now that just made it worse. Or better. But worse. Are you doing this on purpose?”

Niall is incredulous now, hardly able to keep his eyes from blowing comically wide. His stomach feels like it’s full of surgical sponges, expanding and expanding and making his insides feel cottony and fuzzy. If Sienna isn’t careful, she’s going to get them both killed.

“Sienna…”

“Why do you always call me that?”

They’re stopped at a red light so Niall allows himself to turn and look directly at her. He searches her face. He doesn’t allow himself to admire like he really wants to and instead looks for any symptoms of head trauma. He didn’t _think_ she’d hit her head at any time since they’d left the safety of Royal London, but (considering Sienna’s past) it wasn’t too far out of the realm of possibility.

“Do you know your name?”

Sienna rolls her eyes and snorts. “Of course I know my name, you numpty. Why do you call me by it?”

 _Yes_ , Niall thinks, _she’s definitely more alert now._ Sienna is more cognizant and her speech isn’t slow and heavy like it was earlier, but that doesn’t explain why she’s speaking nonsense.

“Uh…” Niall looks away, grateful that cars have started moving so he has something other than her distracting smile to look at. “I’m confused…what else am I supposed to call you?”

“Sigs. Everyone else does!”

“Oh…well, I”—he sneaks a quick glance—“I figured it was like a special nickname…or something.”

She snorts again, something Niall finds strangely endearing.

“Please. Even Samantha calls me Sigs and she hates me most of the time.”

“Samantha?”

“Mmm. From Linda’s. Red hair?”

“Ah…thought you said she was harmless?”

“Most of the time…but she’s been a little…”—she pauses and flaps her hand as she searches for the words—“bitter? Ever since I beat her out for the waitress position. Says I break too many dishes and it shoulda been her instead. Bullshit, I say.”

Niall chuckles and shakes his head.

“Got it. Well, anyway, I…I guess I didn’t want to make any assumptions. Figured I’d be a gentleman and wait for permission.” Niall’s cheeks flood with impossibly more heat. He knows his whole body is probably cherry red at this point.

“Oh!” Sigs dramatically fans her face with the hand that isn’t covered in plaster. “Why, kind sir! Your chivalry’s got my heart aflutter! I’m positively swooning!”

“Yeah, yeah. Cut it out.” Niall rolls his eyes but can’t hide the fat grin that is stretched across his face.

“Where does ‘Sigs’ come from anyway?”

“My full name is Sienna Grace. But no one calls me that other than my mum. My dad thought that it took too long to say so he just…shortened it, I guess. To Sigs.”

“Makes sense.”

“Seriously though, you can call me Sigs. You have my permission, or whatever. I mean…if you want.”

“Okay.” Niall pauses, then tacks on, “Sigs.”

Sienna blooms into a wide, delighted smile, one that makes her eyes shine like the reflection of the sun on water. She traps her bottom lip between her teeth and giggles. Niall has to make a conscious effort to look away and focus on the road instead.

They ride in comfortable silence for a few moments. Sienna settles back into the large seat and when Niall steals another glance at her (something he’s been doing unconsciously with alarming frequency), she is watching the buildings rush by with a far-off, lilty smile. Her fingers restlessly scratch at the plaster of her cast.

“Where are we going?”

“Home,” he says before he catches himself. “Uh…I mean, _your_ home. Hallie texted me earlier and asked me to pick you up since she’s got class all day.”

“I’m surprised you wasted your day off babysitting me.”

It was Niall’s turn to scoff. “It’s hardly babysitting. You’re a grown woman.”

“You underestimate my tendency for disaster.” Niall can hear the grin behind her words.

“I suppose,” he laughs, “but Hallie caught me on a good day. I don’t mind, I promise.”

“Good. Because I don’t like it when people go out of their way for me. It’s completely unnecessary.” Her voice is firm, despite the softness in her expression. Niall’s next laugh holds a hint of insecurity as he turns onto her street. He parks and quickly rushes to open her door, all the while reminding himself to think on what could have her so hesitant to rely on others later when he’s on his own.

Sienna steps down and instantly has to clutch the frame of Niall’s car to keep from swaying. Unfortunately, her instinct was to throw out her injured arm, leaving her wincing and sucking in a hiss.

“Woah, woah.” Niall steadies Sienna with a hand on her waist and another on the back of her neck. “You okay? What’s wrong?”

Sienna inhales three slow breaths through her nose before eyes open. Niall studies her pupils, making sure that they contract like they should. The car ride was relatively short but she’s still already fading.

“You all right?” he repeats. Sienna nods back, takes in one more steadying breath before she speaks.

“Yeah, just a bit dizzy. Never did handle pain medication that well. Should”—another breath—“lie down.”

“Yeah, ‘course. Let me help you inside.”

Niall strokes his thumb along the skin under her jaw, just once, before he drops his gaze to their feet. He tells himself that it’s to make sure he watches where Sienna puts her feet, to prevent any more intimate meetings with the ground, but the truth is that for the two seconds that his thumb caressed Sienna’s neck, her pupils dilated ever so slightly and he doesn’t think it’s because of her dysequilibrium. He'll have to think about that more later.

The trek to Sienna’s flat takes ages, despite the fact that Niall insisted they use the lift to the fifth floor. By the time they reach her front door, Sienna is fully relying on Niall to hold her up. She lets her head fall to his shoulder with a heavy sigh. It’s not necessarily unheard of, that she’s so exhausted after surgery, but it’s not exactly normal to be so winded after such a short time, so Niall wants to get her inside and in her bed before she passes out. From the look of her, it won’t be much longer, so he digs through her bag with a little more urgency, trying to focus on finding her keys and not on how her soft breaths are fanning across his neck.

He doesn’t take the time to look around her flat once they’re inside, but from the quick survey he gets as Sienna directs him to her room, he can tell that her flat is small, cluttered, and quaint. Perfectly _Sienna_.

Her bedroom is no different, clothes litter the floor so Nial has to maneuver around them before he practically pours Sienna into her unmade bed. She sinks in, her eyes already closed. A sweet, tired sigh filters past her lips. Niall helps her settle in, pulls her duvet up and over her body that is clearly heavy with the beginning stages of sleep.

In the connected bathroom, amongst the cosmetics and toothpaste and random hair ties, Niall finds a cold, half-empty cup of tea. He rinses it out, fills it with water, and brings it back to Sienna’s bedside table, right next to her bottle of medication.

He knows it’s probably considered snooping, but he sneaks a brief scan of the rest of her room. Sporadic bursts of color brighten up the otherwise blank room. A canvas with a mess of emeralds and teals and ceruleans, yellow curtains and a matching yellow duvet cover. Some more half-empty cups of tea crop up in various places around the room. Her desk, however, is tidy and mostly clear (except for an eraser and a cup of pencils). Niall is so intrigued by its anomalism that he doesn’t notice Sienna stir.

“Thank you, Doctor Horan.”

Niall whips around, embarrassed that she caught him. Thankfully she’s wearing her lazy smile again and she doesn’t look angry so he pushed the air out of his lungs in a puff of relief.

“Call me Niall.”

Her lazy smile morphs into something softer but still brigt. Something so sweet and genuine and beautiful that it makes Niall feel like he could lift up off the floor and float up to the ceiling. He wants to throw up.

“Thank you, Niall,” Sienna whispers before her eyes slide closed. Her breathing deepens seconds later and she’s undoubtedly fast asleep.

Niall leaves immediately, afraid that if he spends one more second in a flat with a soft, sweet Sienna Grace Murphy, he’ll go absolutely mental with no chance of recovery.

As he lays in bed that night, in his own cold bed in his own monochromatic flat, he stares at the ceiling and tries to forget the way Sienna’s husky whisper sounds wrapped around his name. 


	9. Chapter 9

Sigs has seen her fair share of beautiful sights. Sunsets over the Thames. Her mother’s garden in full bloom. Chris Evans in Captain America right after he gets the super-soldier treatment.

But nothing quite measures up to the sight of Niall Horan in casual clothes standing in her flat. He’s in her front room in black skinny jeans, cute little boots, and a gray button-up that should probably be illegal. Or ripped off right away. But that’s beside the point.

It had been about a week since Sigs had woken up in her bed, groggy and out of sorts with no clue how she’d gotten home from her surgery. That is until she rolled over after a few befuddling minutes and saw the glass of water, bottle of medication, and messily scrawled note on her bedside table.

That morning after her surgery, after she’d gotten over how cute it was that Niall’s penmanship was almost illegible— _Nice one, doc. Way to play into the stereotype…_ —she had slapped a hand (unfortunately the one covered in plaster) to her head with a groan (or perhaps a double groan seeing as she’d also just smacked her head with her huge ass cast). As she’d laid in bed, the memories of the car ride the day before (and Niall in his joggers and fluffy hair) left her flushing with mortification for hours. Especially when Hallie took every opportunity after that to tease her for it. _You look like a Sunday nap? Oh jeez, Sigs! You’ve got it so bad for him!!_

Which brings Sigs to her current predicament: trying not to actually swoon over the doctor in question standing in her living room.

Suddenly the text she’d gotten from Hallie half an hour before— _You’ll thank me later! <3_—made sense.

“Did Hallie put you up to this?”

Niall is sporting a crooked, amused smile and lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “She may have rung me saying that it might be best if I checked up on you. Said she was leaving for a week and that you have a tendency to starve when she’s not there to cook for you.”

Sigs’ mouth drops open. “Wha-I…I’m not starving! What a bloody tosser! I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I _am_ an adult!”

Sigs negates her statement by stomping her foot and crossing her arms across her chest (which was especially awkward since it took her a few tries to manage it with her cast in the way, the bloody thing).

Niall hums before heading to the kitchen. Sigs’ stomach feels jittery when he brushes past her.

“So you’ve been eating proper, then? A healthy diet paves the fastest road to recovery, you know.”

Niall pulls the door of the fridge open and bends down to inspect its contents. He pops his head back up above the door and purses his lips at Sigs, no doubt over the stacked takeaway containers that have stacked up since Hallie left.

Sienna bristles. “Listen, what I eat is no business of yours, okay? You can fuck right off if you’re gonna come in here and tell me what to eat.”

Niall pops back up again, his eyebrows and his hands raised in alarm. Sienna bumps the refrigerator door closed with her foot and glares.

“No, Sigs! I swear I didn’t mean it like that! I was just looking out—”

“Yeah, well you can keep those kinda thoughts to yourself from now on, got it?”

Niall is appropriately sheepish and definitely looks properly chastised as he scratches the back of his head. He nods.

“Got it.”

The pair considers each other for a few silent seconds. As Sigs’ initial flare of indignation fades, she begins to feel bad. She sighs and rubs her forehead.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped like that, although I still stand by what I said.” Her eyes cut to his and he nods quickly to show that he still understands her point. “Anyway, I’m sure you meant well. I’m just not sleeping well and it’s making me grumpy.”

“Is it because of pain? Are you taking your medication? You know sometimes if you take this on an empty stomach it—”

“Niall, it’s not that. I told you, I’m an adult. I can figure out how to take my medication.”

“Right,”—he nods—”Right. Of course.”

Niall shifts from foot to foot and suddenly looks a lot less sure of himself. It’s strange, Sigs thinks, to see him this way, to see him switch so suddenly from doctor mode to nervous boy.

“I did mean well, by the way.”

Sigs pulls her lip between her teeth and leans up against the counter. Her stomach decides to make the situation worse (or possibly better) by growling loud enough that Niall can hear it.

“Um…I guess. I mean, something besides takeaway would be nice, too.”

Niall grins, but not in an _I-told-you-so_ sort of way. It’s more genuine than that and Sigs starts to feel her defensiveness melt away. It feels odd, she thinks, being cross with him. She decides that she doesn’t like the feeling at all.

Niall is paying Sigs no mind as she thinks to herself. He’s too busy opening up all of her cupboards and rummaging around. Sigs doesn’t clue back in until the tail end of his sentence.

“—out and get some.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll need to pop out. You haven’t got a lot to prepare a proper meal here. Need me to get anything while I’m out?”

“Uh…no. Wait, what?”

Niall gives her a strange look, one that’s hard for her to decipher. His mouth is tight, like he’s trying not to smile, and there is a glint in his eye that is far too warm for Sigs’ comfort. It’s almost…sympathetic? In fact, it’s making her all too warm. She doesn’t like it, whatever it is “I’m gonna run to Tesco. To pick up some food and the like.”

His voice is soft and gentle. His doctor voice, Sigs thinks. She doesn’t like this either. It makes her feel like she did in every hospital room, helpless and sad. It left her feeling strange, like her intestines were twisting tighter on themselves. Niall looks so eager to look after, which is…strange. And also exactly what she doesn’t want him to do. She doesn’t need him to take care of her. She doesn’t need anyone to take care of her.

Her stomach gurgles again and she sighs.

“Okay. But…why?”

Niall smiles gently and pulls his keys out of his back pocket. He heads over towards Sigs’ front door and pulls it open. Sigs feels bewildered and confused.

Niall stops in her doorframe, already halfway into the hallway.

“I’m making you dinner, Sienna.” He flashes his teeth once more before grabbing her keys from the hook on the wall and pulling the door closed.


	10. Chapter 10

Niall hefts the grocery bags in his arms and curses the broken down lift and the five flights of stairs he’d just climbed. Normally, it wouldn’t have been a problem (Niall tries to take the stairs most of the time because it’s better for the heart), but he’d gone a little overboard at Tesco and had _probably_ bought too many groceries.

He tries to convince himself that it was his duty as a healthcare professional and Sienna’s severe lack of food that had him loading the Tesco trolley so full. It certainly wasn’t that he felt some sort of personal satisfaction in taking care of Sienna. Because if their conversation in the kitchen had proven anything, it was that she definitely doesn’t need him to take care of her.

Niall huffs when he gets to her front door, propping the bags in his arms in between the door and his belly while he fishes in his back pocket for Sienna’s keys. Sienna’s got a bloody ridiculous amount of keys (and keychains and baubles, for that matter) and it takes him a while to flick through them all to find the one that opens up her flat. He chuckles as he sifts past them all. There’s one of a pug sticking its tongue out, a pineapple, a little horseshoe, and even a four-leaf clover. Niall finds an extra level of joy in that.

It hits him, as he runs the pad of his thumb over that clover, that it feels alarmingly comfortable for him. As someone who has lived alone for so long, someone who has had only himself to take care of after he steps foot outside the hospital, buying groceries and letting himself into someone else’s flat shouldn’t feel so natural. But it does.

He doesn’t have time to think more on it, however, because the doorknob is turning and Niall barely gets a hold on the bags before the door swings open and Sienna stares at him with a raised brow.

“You alright out here? Haven’t turned Peeping Tom on me, have ya?”

“I coulda been. You know, you really should check who’s at your door before you open it.”

Sienna’s nose wrinkles and Niall has to bite down a smile when she rolls the big, blue eyes he likes so much.

Not that…well, not that he thinks about all the time or anything. That would be absurd. And Niall is never absurd. Right?

“Thanks, mum,” Sienna says. Niall almost doesn’t catch it because her voice is low and gravely and she says it as she’s turning around to head further into her flat.

Niall stands abandoned at her wide-open front door. He grunts.

“Don’t worry about me! I’ve got these! No need to help!”

He says it just to be an arsehole. It’s something he hasn’t really done in a long time, teasing and digging at someone for laughs. Not since he’d hung out with his cousin Willie over Christmas.

Sienna’s disembodied voice echoes through the hall and back to him. “It’s what you get for trying to tell me what to do in my own home, ya bloody prat.”

Now that she can’t see him, Niall lets the smile that’s trapped between his teeth spread across his face. He likes it, he thinks. Being able to joke about. He also likes that he can do it with her.

He boosts the groceries higher and steps through the door, nudging it closed with his foot as he goes.

—

When Niall gets to the kitchen he finds it empty. It’s a tiny kitchen (compared to the one in his flat). It opens up into another tiny space that’s occupied by a battered and scarred IKEA table and benches. Just on the other side of that is the living room, which is another small space that’s crammed with an eclectic collection of couches and blankets and general…stuff. A lot of it is odd, but so perfectly right, somehow.

Niall likes Sienna’s flat, he decides just then, but he doesn’t like that he can’t seem to find Sienna in it.

“Sien—erm…Sigs?”

He pokes into the living room, craning his head around. He strains to listen he can hear rustling from behind the closed door of her bedroom.

“Yeah.” Her voice is muffled. “Just a mo’. I’m just— _oof_.”

There’s a thump, then. One that makes Niall wince and take a step closer to her door.

“Everything okay in there?”

“ _Eurgh_ …’m fine, just…stuck.”

“Stuck?” Niall is just outside her door now, his hands hovering as if they can’t decide what he wants to do with them.

The door swings open, and although he knows it’s anatomically unlikely, Niall swears he nearly chokes on his tongue.

“Uh…”—Niall clears his throat behind a fist—“Where are your clothes?”

Niall’s brain races as he fights the urge to let his gaze slip n’ slide down all of Sienna’s exposed skin. It wouldn’t be appropriate considering the situation she’s in.

“‘M stuck.” Sienna stands in the doorframe with her hands stuck above her head. The lovely, soft jumper she was wearing before is stuck up on her head and around her cast just like at Royal London, only this time, instead of just her bra being exposed, it’s also her knickers. And far too much skin.

“Y’know, doc, I was only joking earlier with that Peeping Tom bit. Didn’t think I’d really have to worry.”

The breath whooshes out of Niall’s chest in a vague resemblance of a laugh. He’s almost delirious with how off-guard he feels and how hard it is to keep his eyes off of her body. A voice in the back of his head, one that vaguely sounds like his attending in med school, is telling him to _fucking move already_. He doesn’t snap out of it until Sienna flails.

“Are you gonna help me or not?”

“Right! Yes, sorry. Yes.” He surges forward and very carefully helps Sienna extract herself from her jumper. As he pulls it off of her head, he feels like he wants to shiver. Especially when her hair falls around her shoulders in golden disarray and _especially_ when her damned big eyes—he still doesn’t know what color they are. _Are they cerulean? Cornflower?_ — are as soft as the cotton he just pulled off of her.

Niall can’t move because his body is thrumming and pulling him in three different directions. He can’t tear his eyes from her face because settling his eyes anywhere else would be so, so wrong. He can’t even drop the jumper because he’s suddenly squeezing it so hard that his knuckles are white.

Sienna’s eyes are wide and panicked. Her hospital eyes, as Niall has come to think of them. Her shoulders are up by her ears and her hands are clutched in front of her chest.

Sienna clears her throat and Niall jumps like he’s been hit with a defibrillator. He whirls around and stares at the ceiling, letting out a ragged, shaking breath and clenching his fists.

“Sorry, sorry. That was inappropriate of me, I shouldn’t have stared. Sorry. I just—uh. Sorry.”

“Erm…no, it’s okay. Uh. Thanks. For the help.”

“Yeah, ‘course. Any time!”

Niall can hear her moving around behind him, but he doesn’t dare move. He doesn’t know if this was his cue to get the hell out of her room, but she isn’t yelling at him to get lost yet so he pushes his luck and keeps his feet planted. Although, to be fair, his mind is going a little wild imagining her moving around so close in just her underwe—no! Nope, he can’t be thinking of that right now. Not if he wants to keep his pride intact and his trousers sans boner tent.

Sienna giggles. It’s a tiny, breathy one that Niall almost didn’t even hear but it manages to make him feel like his stomach is in his butt.

“I’m sure you’d love that, doc?”

Niall doesn’t think, just turns around and lifts a brow. Thankfully Sienna is just pulling a striped t-shirt down her stomach.

“What’re you on about?” Niall asks.

“Taking my clothes off any time.” Sienna winks and waltzes out of the room. Niall takes another minute to kick _that_ image out of his head as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [@imsrybitw](https://imsrybitw.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
